Observations on professional development and library experience of a special collections librarian.

The many tasks of the cataloger

This week I did a bunch a different tasks. I pulled the tracing for the retrospective cataloged books. I had some trouble finding some of the tracings such as the ones for chronology dates assigned to the books and subject headings, but they might have been taken out prior to my search. After my searches I began to catalog more multi-volume works. First I addressed the Bewick Chapbooks which were tricky to catalog but satisfying to complete a full and very descriptive record. When I was cataloging this card, I researched the name Nurse Lovechild which was one of the authors of the chapbooks. I selected a record that has all the chapbooks, but they were in different order. In this record there were three possible titles because it was a compilation of twelve different chapbooks. I used the title supplied by the cataloger on our catalog card.

The next set of materials I cataloged were science fiction, pulp, and popular literature. I asked about what needed to added to these copy records. I also gathered different ways to list information in note fields. I continued to catalog these books. An example of the books I cataloged isWill Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

Before I switched to the paper backs, I was becoming overwhelmed and frustrated with how complicated the multi-volumes are. I still have some more retrospective cataloging items to process. I will use the knowledge and techniques I learned from the manual and from my supervisors.